Ill Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir

Editorial Reviews. Review. "Keenan's background as a poet allowed him to enlarge the leondumoulin.nl: I'll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir eBook: Brian Keenan: Kindle Store.
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I'll Tell Me Ma

This is the story of an ordinary boy growing up in Belfast after the war; an ordinary boy who would go on to become world-famous as a hostage in Beirut and author of the extraordinary testimony of imprisonment and survival that was An Evil Cradling. In this remarkable and equally moving act of retrieval, Brian Keenan has captured the vanished world of s Belfast in all its vivid vernacular and grey, post-war austerity.

This is a time of licorice and Airfix models, pigeon-fanciers, street vendors selling coal and bleach and herring, street-fighters with lions on chains a city where westerns were showing every afternoon at the Picture Theatre, where livestock was still herded onto the docks and the shipyards flourished.

It was also a place of ghosts: By the end of the book, after his father s death and his mother s Alzheimer s, Belfast itself becomes a ghost city to Brian Keenan, the boy who leaves to become a man. Rich in detail and atmosphere, I ll Tell Me Ma is an affectionate story of a disaffected childhood.

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At the centre is a shy, self-conscious boy of unusual moral integrity; a boy puzzled by religion and sectarianism, in love with books and music and full of curiosity about the world outside. A book of reclamation, I ll Tell Me Ma is also a coming-to-terms with the past: The story of an ordinary boy growing up in Belfast who would go on to become world-famous as a hostage in Beirut, and author of the extraordinary testimony of imprisonment and survival that was "An Evil Cradling"In this remarkable and equally moving act of retrieval, Brian Keenan has captured the vanished world of s Belfast in all its vivid vernacular and grey, post-war austerity.

This is a a city where westerns were showing every afternoon at the Picture Theatre, where livestock was still herded onto the docks and the shipyards flourished. Keenan memorably told the story of his years as a hostage in Beirut in An Evil Cradling.

I'll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir by Brian Keenan - leondumoulin.nl book review

Now he turns to his childhood. Anyone who had an urban upbringing in the 's will find themselves saying I remember that! Senior Service cigarettes, Pontefract cakes, the rag and bone man, the Lone Ranger, family photographs kept in an old biscuit tin, Dad polishing everyone's shoes, the realisation that there was a wider world beyond the city streets…These are some of the things that brought back my own memories — what can you find?

The grey post war environment of Belfast creeps from the pages into the reader's mind. Ship building, dockyards, serried rows of workers' houses, street vendors and city eccentrics feature throughout.

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But more than anything the book is a song of praise to the people who formed Keenan's early life. His parents, the Birdman, his secondary school head teacher and English teacher are among those singled out for detailed attention.


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Keenan's condemnation of the pathetic educational apartheid that was the grammar and secondary modern system is leavened by his praise for the teachers who made his experience of secondary school anything but second rate. There is no great focus on the growing sectarian troubles that form a key part of Belfast's history.

The giant bonfires that burned every year to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne were a source of boyish excitement and fun in Keenan's early childhood.

Only later does the atmosphere change and he sees these events featuring people moving through the burning grounds on rivers of alcohol, their mood blacker than the streets. The book is about people much more than events, and it is through the people that the city comes to life. The final part of the book deals with Keenan's changing relationship with his parents, particularly his mother, and his parents' declining years.